UK Online Dating Success Stories (and Some Major FAILS)

August 11, 2015

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By Top10BestDatingSites Staff

Online dating has made a giant leap in the past decade. While searching for The One online used to have a huge stigma attached to it, an estimated 20% of relationships now start online, and no one blinks twice when you say that you’ve signed up to one of the major players of online dating.

But making a success of your online dating journey is far less certain. Join us, while we outline some of the best ways to find love online, (and some ideas to avoid!) using real-life success and horror stories from around the web.

Angil’s Story: Love At First Sight, Online Dating Style

You never know when love will strike. Award winning author Angil Tarach-Ritchey found her husband on a dating site only three weeks after signing up. You think that’s fast? Her future husband had been signed up for less than 10 minutes! Still working on his profile, she sent him a message, and they met in person four days later. The rest is history. These type of stories are common, but if you don’t find Mr or Mrs Right ‘right’ away, don’t despair. Some people match with the first person they meet, other success stories count dozens of near misses or even disasters before they happily coupled up.

Willard’s Story: Cast A Wide Net

Willard Foxton, writing for the Independent documents his journey of signing up to as many dating sites as possible and dating dozens of women in his search for his ideal match. If you think he must have had a great first experience, think again. His first online date tried for a “sexy nibble” over dinner, and ended up giving him an "infected human bite wound". I’m pretty sure that would go down in the history books of online dating hell, and yet he didn’t lose hope, continuing his plan of casting a wide net to find love.

Brian’s Story: Honesty Led To Saying “I Do”

Whether you decide to follow Foxton’s lead and date widely, or wait for a real connection before meeting up with a potential match, you will be heavily judged on your online personality. When it comes to building a profile, market leaders Match.com maintain that “it's important to answer these questions accurately and honestly for the best possible chance of meeting your ideal match.”

Brian, a 36-year-old Match user, clearly took this advice to heart and says that he “posted a very brutally honest description. It was pretty long and it detailed who I was and what I was looking for. I didn't try and make myself sound different; I wanted any date to like me for me. So I was very up front and honest.” Zip forward 18 months and he was exchanging wedding vows with the love of his life, proving that being upfront about yourself, ‘warts and all’ is far from a turn off to other singles.

Reddit’s Take: Don’t Leave Out The BIG Things

Even if you do choose to keep some things to yourself, make sure they aren’t likely deal-breakers, like this one story shared on Reddit. Met a girl from POF, we [made plans] to meet for drinks at a bar. Very pretty girl just like her photos suggested but failed to mention: She was 8 months pregnant.” FAIL.

Gemma’s Story: Turning that Frown Upside Down!

POF has far happier stories under its belt, some of which start in unlikely places. When Gemma found out her husband had been cheating on her with literally dozens of women from the website, she decided to turn her divorce story into a happily ever after. Using the very same website, she met Neil, and the two plan to get married in 2016.

Amy’s Reverse-Engineering in the Search for Love

Amy Webb has written her book Data: A Love Story and even given a TED talk on her unusual methods of looking for online love. She made a list of 72 items which were important to her in a man, and after ranking them, she created a fake male profile so that she could reverse engineer her own profile based on what worked for other women and seemed important to single men. Her in-depth rating system left her with just one potential match.

If you’re shaking your head reading this and calling her crazy, you might be interested to note that she is now married to her husband from popular Jewish dating website JDate.

Do get inspired! Although there’s no shortage of horror stories out there, they are simply dwarfed by the ones which shout success. Take a look at the success stories pages of any of our top 10 dating websites and you could become one of them!

About Top10BestDatingSites Staff

The Top 10 Best Dating Sites staff are your guides to the world of online dating websites and services. The team navigates the world of online dating and share their findings to help readers find online dating success. Our team includes dating experts Laurel House, Ken Solin, James Preece, Erika Ettin, Nida Sea, Vanae Tran, Carmelia Ray and many more talented writers. Top 10 Best Dating Sites staff have extensive first-hand experience in: signing up for and using various online dating sites; researching the ever-growing online dating market; and copywriting and editing for various online and print publications about online dating.

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